Wednesday, September 11, 2013

My first fall, finding a top box & the most unique sleep spot to date!

After
such an exciting weekend in Digby at the Wharf Rat Rally last week, I
kind of thought we might not have such an eventful week this past week. I
was certainly wrong!

Evidence of my first in motion spill.

When
we left Digby, it was only slightly raining and this on-and-off again
drizzle continued for the rest of our ride that afternoon and into the
early evening. Finally, as dusk was falling, we found a hilly field to
camp in. (On a side note, Roel believes that any field inhabited by deer
is a good place to camp – so far, this logic has held true.) Per usual,
Roel rode around the field first to find the best spot to set up our
tent and to scope out the level of difficulty of the terrain, etc., for
me. Upon finding the perfect spot, he gave me the go-ahead to ride up
myself. I was feeling a bit soft and not up for the challenge of
negotiating a track up the wet, grassy hillside and begged him to ride
up for me. But he insisted it was no more difficult than riding around
on my Dad’s lawn and so there I went... High throttle, good clutch
control, not too fast… things were going well until I had made it about
mid-way up the 70-meter climb and all of the sudden my front wheel
simply stopped gaining traction and my rear wheel kept right on going…
and going… until my bike had spun around 90 degrees and was at an angle
perpendicular to the original climb. And then down the bike and I went.
It was my first drop while actually in motion and though my side boxes
protected my leg and basically enabled me to hop off the bike mid-fall,
thus uninjured, it still didn’t feel good. Upon hearing the commotion
and seeing the nice strip of field I had torn up Roel came running and
(after surmising I was OK) asked “How the h$ll did you manage to do
that!!” Well, you can imagine how well that went over.

This doesn't look quite right :/

The
bike was completely fine, but my right side pannier suffered the brunt
of the fall and was sitting at a decidedly strange new angle. Thanks to
Russ for reinforcing the wall of the box back in Asheville, it’s nothing
a bit of a strap can’t sort out for now.

I
went to sleep that night, listening to the rain dropping on the tent,
feeling quite grim and disappointed in myself. I’d felt like I was
really getting somewhere with my riding, like I had really improved, and
this just seemed to knock me back on my heels. I was angry at
myself for not just admitting to my limitations: two months of riding
and tires missing a bit of tread don't make a great combination for
climbing a muddy, grassy hill that had been steadily rained on for days.
Not to mention that the weather was looking pretty bleak for the next
few days and the new angle my box had been forced into definitely meant
it would no longer be water proof.

The
next morning we awoke to a brief break in the rain. Just long enough
for us to get packed up, secure my box to the frame and get on our way
to Truro. We had coffee there, checked the weather (more rain) and
continued on. And on.

Now THOSE are some skid marks ;)

The
monotony and my remaining grumpiness quickly disappeared when Roel, who
has been riding for 10 plus years, in all sorts of terrain and actually
has a new front tire managed to take a similar spill to the one I had
taken the night before. He had missed a turn off and rather than turning
around, decided to cut across an old parking lot that separated the two
roads, and was dotted with mud patches. Well, as soon as he hit a mud
patch, his bike basically did the same thing mine had the night before,
spinning 90 degrees before going down. His pannier was fine but one of
the waterproof bags affixed to the front of his bike tore off. I just
missed snapping a pic of the bike down before Roel got it up on the
kickstand. Pity ;)

Dumpster diving

Getting route advice from an expert

By
the end of the day the rain had become so heavy that as soon as the sun
started to set, we were eager to find a place to camp. We happened upon
an abandoned camp ground with covered concrete patches (PERFECT!!!),
next to the highway, across from a truck stop. In hopes that the rain
would abate, we treated ourselves to dinner at the truck stop and spent
the evening chatting with some truckers about the nicest roads in the
area and across the province. At one point, our dinner was interrupted
when two black bears created quite a commotion in the restaurant as they
were dumpster-diving out back. (We spent a fair amount of time ridding
all of our bags and packs of food and stringing it up out of bears
reach before tucking into our sleeping bags.)

Still a soggy morning :(

We
woke up to even more rain the next morning. 4 days in a row! We rode on
into Bathurst and immediately found a nice library to spend the day at.
While I spent the afternoon online, Roel went out to explore and ended
our search for an affordable top box for my bike… at Home Hardware : ) My
new top box is a massive tool box made by DeWalt! As Home Hardware was
about to close, and we would need to borrow their tools to install my
new top box, we resigned ourselves to staying in the area that evening. A
nice lady at the checkout station asked where we planned to go and
camp, and so we asked her for suggestions in the area. Without
hesitation, she pulled out her phone and started calling around for
places for us to stay. Shortly, she heard back from a friend of theirs
who had spent time traveling around the Province in a horse drawn
covered wagon and had decked it out like a studio apartment. He was
currently staying with his parents downtown, and we could sleep in the
wagon out in the woods. What the heck – it sounded better than spending
another watery night in the tent!

We
wound up spending the evening chatting with Bonnie (the Home Hardware
employee), Dale (her husband) and Glen (the owner of the tinker wagon).
Bonnie had whipped up some clam dip and so we sat around the fire next
to the wagon discussing organic farming, using horses in place of
machinery to farm and log and Glen’s time traveling around in the wagon.
And the wagon was amazing – nicely finished and insulated on the
inside. We bid our hosts goodnight and within moments of them leaving,
the skies opened up again and poured! As the thunder cracked and
lightning illuminated everything around us to day glow, we were beyond
grateful to be in the wagon – even though our new tent has held up very
well in the rain to this point, it is not Noah’s Ark and we surely
would have gotten very wet that evening.

The amazing Tinker Wagon we spent the night in!

The
next morning was sunny (yes, I praised every God and Goddess I had
prayed to for good weather), and we headed out to visit the local Honda
dealer, still in search of a chain and sprockets for Roel. Glen heard
that we had left the caravan and tracked us down at Honda to give us
fresh tomatoes, apples and parslane that he had picked for us that
morning from his garden. Bonnie and Dale met us at Home Hardware later
(it was Bonnie’s day off), to help us install my top box and say
goodbye. After days of rain, sleeping in a dry caravan, being so well
looked-after by locals, AND waking up to a sunny day, we were on top of
the world.

Insert appropriate pun about thinking outside of the box :)

That
afternoon, we headed in the direction of the Gaspe Peninsula. Many had
told us that it was not to be missed, but with questionable weather we
went to sleep that night in our dry tent, with the understanding that if
we woke up to a clear day, we’d head for Gaspe. But, if the weather was
at all questionable, we’d skip the 700 kilometer loop as the weather on
the peninsula can get famously nasty.